C. S. Lewis

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C. S. Lewis, photographed in 1947.

Clive Staples Lewis (b. November 29, 1898, Belfast - d. November 24, 1963, Oxford) was an Irish writer, novelist, essayist, Christian apologist and moral mythologist.

Early life

The second son of Albert James Lewis, a solicitor, and Flora Augusta Hamilton Lewis, whose father was a Church of Ireland minister, he was baptized as an infant in the Anglican church at St Mark's Dundela, Belfast. Aged 4, after his pet dog "Jacksie" was killed by a car, Lewis declared that his name was now Jacksie. This later became truncated to Jacks which became Jack, the name used by friends and family for the rest of his life.His older brother was Warren Hamilton Lewis (1895 – 1973) whom C. S. referred to as "Warnie" and described as "my dearest and closest friend." The brothers formed a very close bond playing together at home home, writing and illustrating stories for their fictional world called "Boxen", a world populated by dressed, talking animals, and obviously the precursor of the land of Narnia, the magical land of children's adventures that retell the story of the Creation, Fall, and Redemption of humankind. Lewis loved to read, and as his father’s house was filled with books, he felt that finding a book he had not read was as easy as "finding a blade of grass." The "reality" he found on the pages of this extensive library seemed as tangible and meaningful to him as anything that transpired outside in the "real world", and he has said of these childhood years that "...at the age of seven, and eight, I was living almost entirely in my imagination; or at least that the imaginative experience of those years now seems to me more important than anything else."

C. S. was homeschooled until he was 10 years old. On August 23, 1908 - her husband's birthday - Flora Lewis died of cancer. In the same year Albert Lewis' father and brother also died, and as their father grieved, C.S. and Warren Lewis were left with only each other for comfort and support.

Lewis as a child

Education

Lewis was enrolled at Wynyard School in Watford, Hertfordshire, in Sptember 1908, where Warren was already a pupil. Lewis was unhappy at the "brutal" school, which in later life he referred to as "Belsen" or "Oldies" after the nickname of the Headmaster, Robert "Oldie" Capron (who was later committed to an asylum for the insane.) Lewis was withdrawn from the school in June 1910, the school closing shortly afterwards due to a lack of pupils. In September 1910 he was enrolled as a boarding student at Campbell College, Belfast, one mile from the family home, and where he remained until November of the same year, when he was withdrawn after developing serious respiratory difficulties.

As a result of his health problems, Lewis was sent in 1911 to Malvern, England, which was widely regarded as a health resort, especially for those with tubercolosis and lung ailments. He was enrolled as a student at Cherbourg House (which he referred to as "Chartres"), a prep school near to Malvern College where his brother Warren was by now a student, and here he remained until June 1913. His love of fiction developed further while at school, where "[...]I also developed a great taste for all the fiction I could get about the ancient world: Quo Vadis, Darkness and Dawn, The Gladiators, Ben Hur[...] Early Christians came into many of these stories, but they were not what I was after. I simply wanted sandals, temples, togas, slaves, emperors, galleys, amphitheaters, the attraction, as I now see, was erotic, and erotic in rather a morbid way."

It was during this time that he abandoned his childhood Christian faith. The Matron of Cherbourg House was very influential on the young Lewis, contributing enormously to his decision to declare himself an atheist:

She was floundering in the mazes of Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, Spiritualism; the whole Anglo-American Occultist tradition. I had never heard of such things before; never, except in a nightmare or a fairy tale, conceived of spirits other than God and men. I had loved to read of strange sights and other worlds and unknown modes of being, but never with the slightest belief. Without knowing it, I was already desperately anxious to get rid of my religion. I had set myself a standard. No clause of my prayer was to be allowed to pass muster unless it was accompanied by what I called a 'realization,' by which I meant a certain vividness of the imagination and the affections.

Night after night, dizzy with desire for sleep and often in a kind of despair, I endeavored to pump up my 'realizations.' This ludicrous burden of false duties in prayer provided of course, an unconscious motive for wishing to shuffle off the Christian faith.

You might ask how I combined this directly Atheistical thought with my Occultist fancies. They had only this in common, that both made against Christianity. And so, little by little I became an apostate, dropping my faith. Dear Miss C. had been the occasion of much good to me as well as of evil. Nor would I deny that in all her 'Higher Thought,' disastrous though its main effect on me was, there were elements of real and disinterested spirituality by which I benefited.

His melancholy search for the security and settledness he had taken for granted before his mother's death, the constant moving from school to school (where at each he faced the loneliness of being a non-athletic boy whose aesthetic sensibilities were out of step with his peers'), combined with the "distant" personality of his father make his adolescent rejection of religion easier to understand. This is qualified by the adult Lewis himself when he later described his young self as being (paradoxically) "very angry with God for not existing".

He left Cherbourg House in the summer of 1913 and enrolled at Malvern College (which he called "Wyvern") where he studied until June 1914. In September 19 1914, Lewis was enrolled for private tuition with W.T. Kirkpatrick, known as the "The Great Knock," in Great Bookham, Surrey, where he remained until April 1917. Kirkpatrick, a former Headmaster of Lurgan College, Northern Ireland, had been both a tutor and legal client of Albert Lewis and had already successfully prepared Warren Lewis for admission to the Army's Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

In December 1916 Lewis first visited the University of Oxford to take a scholarship examination and in April 1917 began his study at University College, Oxford. Although interrupted by his service in World War I, Lewis received a First in Honour Moderations (Greek and Latin Literature) in 1920, a First in Greats (Philosophy and Ancient History) in 1922, and a First in English in 1923

Military service

Lewis had joined the Officer Training Corps in September 1913 whilst at Malvern College. Although he had left it when he had commenced his study with Kirkpatrick, he rejoined the Malvern Contingent of the Oxford University OTC in March 1917. On April 25, 1917 he applied to join an Officer Cadet Unit, stating a preference to serve in the infantry, preferably with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers or Royal Fusiliers, or with a horse transport unit of the Army Service Corps. Still under the age of 21, the application was counter-signed by his father and character references were taken from Arthur C.Allen (his former Schoolmaster at Malvern) and also from Kirkpatrick. His action was completely voluntary, as although conscription had been in force in Britain since the introduction of the Military Service Act in 1916, it did not apply to Irish nationals. Five days later the Officer Commanding Oxford University Officers Training Corps completed a recommendation that Lewis attend an Officers Cadet Unit, noting that Lewis was "likely to make an useful officer but will not have had sufficient training for admission to an OCU before the end of June".

The medical examination then conducted reveals that Lewis was 5 feet 10¾ inches tall and weighed 182 pounds, with a chest measurement of 34½ inches fully expanded and 32 at rest. His vision was rated "good".

On June 1, 1917 Lewis was admitted to No.4 Officer Cadet Battalion, with a minimum service commitment of 4½ months. It was during this period that Lewis shared a room and became close friends with another cadet, Edward Courtnay Francis "Paddy" Moore (1898-1918), striking a mutual pact that if either died during the war the survivor would take care of both their families. In September he was transferred from the Oxford University OTC to a temporary commission with the rank of Second Lieutenant in the Special Reserve of Officers in the Regular Army. He was posted to the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry in South Devon, and a few days later was then posted to join the 1st Battalion of the regiment in France.

He was wounded during the Battle of Arras on May 15, 1918 by shell fragments to the chest, which also broke a rib, left wrist and left leg. After a week of treatment he was evacuated back to England where he was hospitalized until December 24, 1918 and was demobilised from the Army. Paddy Moore had been killed in action near Peronne, France, and Lewis struck up a close relationship with his mother, Jane King Moore (1873-1951). Athough, at 45, she was 27 years older than Lewis they were clearly particularly fond of one another and Mrs. Moore played an important role in his convalescence as his father refused to visit him.

External links

• C.S. Lewis Society of California
• Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College
• "C. S. Lewis: A Modest Literary Biography and Bibliography," by Bruce L. Edwards
• "Finding the Permanent in the Political: C. S. Lewis as a Political Thinker," by John G. West
• "Still Surprised by Lewis," by J.I. Packer
• C.S. Lewis Foundation
• Into the Wardrobe
• "C. S. Lewis and the Materialist Menace," by John G. West
• New York C.S. Lewis Society
• The Question of God, PBS series
• C.S. Lewis and the Inklings
• "C. S. Lewis on Mere Science," by Michael Aeschliman
• "Truth in the Fire: C. S. Lewis and Pursuit of Truth Today," by Dallas Willard